


Homecoming

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: ANNNNNGST, F/M, Sappiness, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 08:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11848263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: It's good to be home.





	1. Chapter 1

1\. It’s drizzly and cold on the day Daniel checks out of the hospital and steps into the passenger seat of his uncle’s battered car. He’s able to keep a pretty good grip on his emotions as his father starts up the engine and he watches the hospital shrink into the distance in the rearview mirror until it’s gone, gone, gone. They pass over the bridge and slow to a crawl with the traffic; his mind registers the same street names, the same storefronts, the same intersections he’s known all his life. They’re still there. It’s like he never left; like those two and a half years abroad never happened, like he hadn’t spent the last several months flat on his back and wondering what he was supposed to do with his life now.

His father’s deli is there too, of course, with the scratched counter and the rickety chairs and the Dodgers pennants on the walls. The sign on the door is turned to read “Closed,” and below that, his father has taped up a note: “My son is home. Open tomorrow.” Daniel’s eyes well up with tears and he quickly turns his head and wipes them away. His father is watching. If the old man asks Daniel if he’s all right, he thinks he might break down all together, but he knows better than that.

“Dinner’s ready. There’s lasagna from the Rinaldis and Mrs. Avila brought over flan last night,” his father says as they head upstairs, Daniel following at his own pace. “It’s a little burnt. Some things don’t change.”

Some things don’t change. Other things do. That night, Daniel goes to bed early and even though he’s exhausted he can’t fall asleep. He lies there and listens to the sounds of cars and people on the street below, their voices drifting up from the dark. Two men shout at each other drunkenly, a woman laughs, tires screech on the asphalt. On the other side of the ocean, the war is still raging and the men in his unit are still fighting and dying, and here he is safe in his own bed, massaging what’s left of his leg.

Finally he’s had enough and he gets up and makes his way to the kitchen. The floor creaks loudly under his crutches, but his father’s door stays closed. Daniel opens the window, sticks his head out, and shivers. By this hour the streets are mostly quiet and the lamps cast long, eerie shadows. This is the time of night where his mind wanders to bad places and he sometimes has to force himself back from the darkness. 

It’s not long before his father comes shuffling out of his room, yawning. “Can’t sleep?”

Daniel shakes his head. “It’s fine. You should go back to bed, Pop.”

His father places a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, but he pulls out chairs for both of them and they sit and look out the window together until the stars begin to fade and the sun peeks shyly over the horizon, bringing the city back to life.

* * *

2\. The house in Los Feliz is too big for him, really, and he doesn’t have a clue how to take care of the yard, but he likes the fact that all this space is his and he’s not crammed into a tiny Lower East Side apartment with his father or stuffed into the barracks with a couple dozen men. It’s a little lonely at first and he ends up leaving some rooms empty just because he has no furniture to fill them with. Still, he gets used to it, and he’s so busy setting up the office anyway that there’s not much time to be homesick. He picks up takeout on the way home and goes to bed exhausted every night and he tells himself he made the right choice in taking the job; that if he had stayed in New York he never would have been able to move up. Besides, the truth is that he likes being in charge. He likes choosing his staff and haggling over the budget. He likes having an office to himself and hearing the respect in his agents’ voices when they address him. Even a year ago, this new life felt impossible, but he did it, he earned it, he can’t go back.

So when Rose hands him the first message from Peggy, he puts it in his drawer and doesn’t return the call. He goes for his physical therapy sessions with Violet, and when she’s not ordering him around like a drill sergeant she cracks jokes and talks to him about surfing and movies and complains about her coworkers. He asks her out almost on a whim and she blushes like mad and agrees.

Violet is the first to see his new place, and she isn’t shy about suggesting improvements—little things he hadn’t thought of, like lace curtains and a door mat. Soon the house isn’t so empty after all, especially not when she’s there, reading the paper on his couch with a slight frown; or sitting at his dining room table, giggling and tipsy after her second glass of wine; or pulling cookies out of the oven. It’s so domestic, so _normal_. Here in Los Angeles, he can picture a future in a way he couldn’t in New York.

Yet some nights, his thoughts still drift back home. Rose will deliver another message from Peggy, delicately not asking why he’s let her calls go unanswered. He dreams of the interrogation room, only this time he’s the one handcuffed to the table while she stalks around like a wounded animal, accusing him of betrayal. He’ll go into a restaurant and see a dark-haired woman sitting alone at the bar with her back to him, and then she’ll turn her head and it’s only a stranger after all. _Another time, all right?_ He tries to put it all behind him.

But then, one day, there she is, standing in the office with a tentative smile on her face. “Hello…Chief?”

* * *

3\. The light is on in the hallway and the house is quiet when Daniel arrives just a little after three in the morning. He carefully shuts the door behind him and walks as quietly as he can into the living room, and he smiles when he sees Peggy sprawled out on the couch, sound asleep, a paper dangling from her hand. Her mouth is wide open and she’s snoring a little. It’s cold in the living room but Daniel doesn’t want to wake her. He turns to go grab an extra blanket, but then his crutch hits the leg of the coffee table with a thump and Peggy blinks, yawns, and sits up.

“You’re back late,” she chides him sleepily, keeping her voice down so as not to wake the children. He’s been gone for almost a week, supervising a training session for new recruits out in the desert close to the Arizona border. In just a couple days Peggy will be off for a long trip to Bangalore. Moments like these when they're both be home are far and few between lately, and even then most of the time the kids keep them occupied.

“I know. The last exercise took longer than I thought. You didn’t have to stay up for me.” He leans his crutch against the wall and sits down beside her with a sigh, trying not to wince at the soreness in his muscles.

His wife doesn’t miss a thing. She arches an eyebrow. “Daniel?”

He shakes his head. “It’s fine; I just realized I’m a little out of shape. And it was a long drive back. I think I brought back five pounds of sand in the car.” Not to mention in his hair, and his socks, and in the joints of the prosthetic. He’s in desperate need of a real shower and a real bed.

“And the training?”

“It went pretty well. Yee was a really good addition, I think, and McLaughlin is sharp. Donahue needs to work on his reflexes.” That was the recruit who had accidentally bruised Daniel’s ribs and stomped on Lewis’s finger, but he decides to leave that part out for now. “The kids behaved?”

“Maria didn’t bite anyone in kindergarten this week, but Michael did get into his leftover birthday cake.”

“We’ll have to put it under lock and key next time. Though even that might not be enough.” He reaches out and takes her hand. “And how’d you hold up?”

“Is this your way of asking if _I_ behaved?” she snorts. They had a serious argument over work matters just before Daniel had left for the training, but she doesn’t seem angry any longer. They’ll still have to sort it out in the morning. She squeezes his hand.

He shakes his head and grins. “Missed you, Peg.”

Peggy reaches out and touches his cheek, running her fingers along his stubble, tracing his jaw. She kisses him gently. “Welcome home, my love.”

With that, she picks up his bag and heads to the bedroom. He gets up to follow her and then pauses to look at the paper Peggy left on the coffee table. It’s a map of the desert out where they ran the training session. He smiles and folds it back up. When he stops by the office tomorrow, he’ll look into what maps they have of India, even though he’s not going himself. Just in case.

By the time he’s unpacked and changed out of his dusty clothes and showered, Peggy is already dozing off. He climbs into bed, wraps his arms around her, and kisses her forehead. She mumbles something sleepily and burrows her head into his shoulder. His heart aches with happiness.

Last week, he was away, and soon she’ll be off to India, and who knows what the future has in store for them after that. But here they are for now. It’s good to be home.


	2. Chapter 2

After the funeral, after the visit to the gravesite, after the aunts and uncles and neighbors are gone, leaving behind their casseroles and cakes and letters of condolence—a whole stack of them on the kitchen table to sort through and answer—after it’s all over and the house is silent, Peggy goes upstairs to his room and tries to memorize it. The desk, the closet, the dresser, the bed, just as he left it. The room is hot and stuffy and she opens the window to let in the breeze, sticks her head outside, and exhales. It’s a beautiful summer day.

The plot in the cemetery is empty, and always will be. Michael’s plane was shot down over the Atlantic, they said. The night after they heard the news, she dreamed of the airplane resting on the ocean floor, Michael waiting inside the cockpit for her to find him, to bring him home. _Bloody hell, Peggy, what took you so long? Where’ve you been?_ I'm sorry, she wanted to say, but when she opened her mouth the seawater rushed in and filled her lungs, and she woke up gasping and alone.

The plot in the cemetery is empty, but there are the personal effects to deal with. Michael’s red socks with holes in the heels, two novels with drawings in the margins and dog-eared pages, a metal comb. The officers handed her the box and then drove away, leaving her standing there in the driveway, still in her wedding dress, knees shaking. She had closed the box up and put it on top of the dresser in his room and left it there. Now she takes it down and opens it again, putting each item away. Socks to the sock drawer, novels to the book shelf, comb on top of the desk by the mirror. It’s silly, she knows, but it makes her feel better somehow. Everything in its place.

(She remembers this, six years later, when she’s packing up Colleen’s possessions to send to the family: her shampoo and her soap, her silverware and her chipped mug, her shoes and her sweaters, all in cheerful pastel colors—sky blues and mint greens and pale pinks. She remembers it again when Daniel tells her the story of how he asked for his effects to be thrown out when he thought he was dying. He came home in the end; his things didn’t. She wonders who will put her things in boxes if she dies.)

She toys with the ring on her finger and thinks of the envelope sitting in her drawer, Michael’s letter recommending her to the SOE. They fought over it again, after her engagement party. It was the last time she spoke to him. _What will you do after you marry Fred_ , he asked. _Buy a nice little cottage a few miles from home? Pass the time washing the dishes and mending his socks?_ It had made her even angrier. _This is_ my _life_ , she told him, and he just nodded. _That it is, Peg._ _That it is_.

Peggy shuts the door to Michael’s room and goes back to her own. She pulls out the letter, running her fingers along the text, and she makes up her mind.

* * *

The weeks after the conclusion of the Stark case go by in the blink of an eye. There’s Chief Dooley’s funeral, and Yauch’s, and Corcoran’s. There are interrogations and follow up interrogations. There are repairs to the office and the writing of reports. There are lengthy discussions with Howard over the return of his confiscated inventions and threats of legal action, some of them highly creative. Interim Chief Thompson is quickly named Chief Thompson and settles with ease into Dooley’s office. The work goes on.     

Daniel leaves, too. His appointment to the new west coast bureau catches Peggy off guard, and he departs less than a week after his position is announced. She’s pleased for him, of course; he certainly deserves it. A month later, his spot is filled by a new hire, Agent Friedman, who’s well qualified but has Krzeminski’s level of charm and tact. Only now she has no one to commiserate with at the SSR; no one to roll her eyes at when some agent makes an absurd remark. After some time passes, she decides to give Daniel a call, and then another one. Both go unanswered. He must be busy setting up the office, she thinks at first. But after that, she does begin to wonder if that isn’t it at all, if this is deliberate, if it was something she said…

Peggy keeps it to herself, because why trouble anyone else with this? Angie’s landed a minor role in a musical, so she has enough to deal with in addition to the other ongoing dramas in her life. Their living situation is stable. Howard’s brownstone is luxuriously furnished, and there’s no curfew to evade. (There is, however, the occasional angry ex-girlfriend who comes knocking for Howard.) At work, Jack has put her on actual cases and they’re closing in on Dottie Underwood. Filing and coffee duties fall to the most junior agents, as they ought to. This is what she wanted from the start. There’s nothing for her to complain about, really.

But she can’t fool Angie forever. One night after rehearsal and about a third of the way into a bottle of schnapps, Angie abruptly stops her story about the skinny little jerk at the diner and gives Peggy a suspicious look. “What’s eating you, English?”

Angie won’t be diverted, so Peggy goes ahead and gives her a somewhat abbreviated version. When she’s finished, Angie pours her another shot and slides it across the table. “You’re sweet on him.” It’s not a question.

“What? No, no, he’s just a friend,” Peggy protests, but her face is burning. She shouldn’t have said anything.

“Uh huh.”

Peggy glares at her and downs the shot.

* * *

Peggy visits Daniel’s house for the first time not long after Jack's shooting. They sit at the kitchen table and spread out the photos from the hotel room, trying to make sense of it, any of it, and even though it’s late Daniel makes coffee for the two of them. She rubs her eyes and gazes around the room as he pours a cup for her. The walls are a cheerful shade of yellow, lacy curtains framing the windows. It feels comfortable. She tries to imagine him shuffling around this kitchen every morning, reading the paper before work, coffee turning cold on the counter.

His voice brings her back to the present. “Cream, no sugar, right?”

He remembers. She smiles at him tentatively, and he blushes and looks down. It’s only been a week, but the kiss feels like ages ago, like a dream. When he comes back to the table she reaches out and takes his hand, and he doesn’t pull away.

After that, she finds herself at his place often, sometimes to work on cases, but sometimes…not. She learns the idiosyncrasies of the house; the way to turn the faucet in the bathroom sink so it doesn’t leak, the creaky floorboards in the hall, the dip in the middle of the couch. The backyard is enormous and Daniel’s constantly losing the battle with the weeds, but there’s also an orange tree with the sweetest oranges Peggy’s ever tasted. She climbs to the top to pick them when they ripen, while Daniel watches from below, shifting his weight back and forth, pretending not to worry.

Somewhere along the way, she decides she loves him.

Their work runs late into the night sometimes, and after a while, she ends up coming back to his place more often than not. She leaves a bag of toiletries in the bathroom and a spare change of clothes in the closet, hanging next to his shirts and his suits. The initial awkwardness between them gradually disappears. He’ll tease her from the bedroom, taking care of his leg while she pins up her hair in front of the bathroom mirror.

The thought comes to her one night that every night could be like this. It frightens her a little. She slips out of bed, careful not to wake Daniel, and goes to the bathroom to wash her face. She spends a long time gazing at her reflection in the dim light and imagining a future for herself. A space for both of them.

Peggy had three different addresses in New York in the space of a year. She knows how to pack her entire life into two suitcases in half an hour—clothes, sheets, books, firearms, a few small mementos. Before that, she slept in dormitories, in tents, in vehicles, on the ground, not knowing if there would be any home for her to return to once the war was over. She’s taught herself to not get attached to any single place. An apartment is just an apartment; a house is just a house. But whatever _this_ is—this feels different. This feels like coming home.

Daniel’s awake when she comes back to bed. He rolls over and yawns. “You okay?”

“Go to sleep,” Peggy says, planting a kiss on his cheek. She listens to his breathing slow, and she soon begins to relax. She’s nearly asleep when she realizes there’s something she wants to tell him. “Daniel?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

He wraps his arm around her waist and smiles. “Love you too.” 


End file.
